James Bond’s Real Life Story: How Sydney Reilly’s Deadly Spy Life Inspired The Iconic 007 | World News
The Real Life Story of James Bond: On the evening of November 5, 1925, prisoner number 73 was taken from his cell in Moscow’s notorious Lubyanka prison. He was taken by car to the nearby Sokolniki forest with three agents from the OGPU, the Soviet secret service. The car stopped near a pond on Bagarosk Road, and the prisoner was asked to get out and take a walk in the forest. Such walks, which took place intermittently in the previous days, were routine for him.
He barely took 30-40 steps when OGPU agent Abraham Abisalov pulled out his pistol and shot him in the back. The prisoner had no warning, and even if he had suspected danger, it was impossible for him to survive, since Stalin himself had ordered the execution. Sydney Reilly, considered by the intelligence community to be one of Britain’s greatest spies, lay dead.
He was born to Jewish parents in Odessa, Ukraine, in 1873 and moved to London in the 1890s. He married an Irish woman and added her surname to his own, introducing himself as Irish. Over time, he switched between the roles of businessman and freelance spy.
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Reilly collected sensitive information for both England and Japan. He provided British intelligence with detailed reports on oil resources in the Caucasus and sold Russian defense plans to the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese War. He also made arms and ammunition deals in New York, Japan and Russia.
By 1914, St. He stole plans for German naval expansion in St. Petersburg and shared them with the British.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Reilly expressed interest in joining the British Army. Before leaving for Russia in March 1918, British SIS chief Mansfield Cumming reviewed his past. Despite warnings that Reilly was intelligent but neither loyal nor principled, Cumming sent him on a spy mission.
Reilly had an uncanny ability to gather intelligence through relationships with women. He maintained contact with numerous women in Moscow, including actresses Yelizaveta Outen, Dagmara Karozus, Olga Starzeveskaya and Maria Fride, and often benefited from access to important documents.
In April 1918, he bypassed other British agents and approached the Kremlin directly, claiming to investigate Soviet successes. He met Vladimir Bruvich, Lenin’s chief of staff, and was granted access to official events, including May Day celebrations at the Polytechnic Museum, just steps away from Trotsky’s speech. He even joked about assassinating Trotsky, but restrained himself.
Reilly and his partner George Hill planned a rebellion against the Bolsheviks. They intended to capture Lenin and other leaders during a Soviet council meeting. However, the operation was interrupted when a student shot Cheka chief Mosel Yuritsky and Fanya Kaplan attempted to assassinate Lenin. St. British agents in St. Petersburg were arrested and Reilly narrowly escaped to London via Finland by 9 November.
He spent his later years in Europe, where a Russian court sentenced him to death in absentia for attempting to overthrow the Bolsheviks. His last mission in 1925 was aimed at gathering intelligence on Soviet military and industrial capabilities. Former Soviet agent Boris Gudz revealed that he was part of the team that interrogated and eventually executed Reilly near Moscow in 2002.
Reilly’s extraordinary life inspired Ian Fleming to create James Bond. Fleming drew on Reilly’s charm, mastery of languages, talent for fine clothing, love of women, skill with cars and guns, and emotional detachment from enemies to create the iconic spy.
